Gallery 4

Had the privilege of working with this awesome boy and his dedicated owners.

Nuke is a working line GSD, that means bucketloads of drive.

Having a high drive working dog without an off switch would be very difficult to live with, let alone take for a walk, so we needed to teach him how to self regulate, build his impulse control, allowing us to switch him from prey to pack drive, and to honour his genetics by providing him with an outlet for his high drives in a safe, controlled environment.

Nuke had some foundation obedience in place already, hence we did not have to work with him as long as we otherwise would have had to with a dog with no, or poor, foundation obedience.

"Lola" is a young female German Shepherd/Kelpie X, so this is not only a dog with tons of prey drive, but she also just wants to work, she needs to work.

We've only had four sessions with this team, and the video below is from the second session, in a public park on Sept 16th 2019, which they pretty much nailed. :)

Video to the left:

What a difference a change in venue plus more distractions make, in the video above, she is nailing "place" with both duration and distance, whereas in the video to left, we had to "loosen" the old criteria, so now the only requirement was for her to stay on "place" with the handler standing right next to her.

This is what generalising behaviours are all about.

Video below; getting towards the end of training, Lola proving not only how agile she is, but also her confidence.

I've been working with this young boy for a while now, concentrating on foundation obedience, place and crate training as well as teaching him to be polite.

He is wearing the K9Life Transitional Leash, and the difference between a traditional halti and the K9Life Transitional Leash used here, is that it is thicker and softer as well as quickly converting into a slip leash as required.

It is connected to the back of the dogs neck, and because of how it is made, I find most dogs accept this tool more readily than the conventional halti.

It is fairly expensive here in Australia though, as it is handmade in the U.S, and the low Australian dollar combined with the freight pushes the prices up quite a bit.

Middle left; short video showing a little bit of some of the work we did this morning, October 2nd 2019.

You'll see a very good example of why it is so important for the handler to be "leash aware" at all times.

This video also clearly illustrates how dog learn by association; he has been taught "sit" with the handler either standing in front of, or next to him, so what happens when we present him with a different picture, the handler standing behind him?

Video, bottom left; this is their first visit to this particular location, lots of new smells and other distractions to deal with - this is what generalising behaviour is all about.

Remember, we have to repeat all the behaviours we want to be solid when in public - everywhere.

Just because your dog can sit, drop, stay and so on at home, does not mean he/she can do it everywhere else.

November 8th 2019 - final training session done.